"conversions" news and stories

I must have been living in a hole, because until yesterday, I never knew that there was a difference between an American cup and a Canadian cup. It can't be all that much, since I've used the two interchangeably for years, but it has ruffled my feathers and made me wonder if all of my baking would've been just a little bit better had I known this earlier.

It all came on the heels of me trying to transcribe a recipe that had everything by weight. Personally, I like weighing my dry goods, but I like to throw in a cup here or there when it's a liquid. But now I have to watch my cups, and figure weight, and be sure that my calculations are for the right ingredients. I get the differences between measuring systems, and I grumble my way through density and volume, but this is something different. A cup can't be a cup if the two sizes are different! That's just silly -- especially in an age where we get recipes from all over the globe.

And I wasn't even going to write about it until I read that Haagen-Dazs was shrinking their pints from 16 ounces to 14 ounces. You can't shrink a unit of measurement! What's wrong with people!?

A pint is not a pint unless it's a pint! A cup is not a cup unless it's a cup!

[via Serious Eats]

Ever hunker down to whip up a recipe, only to discover that measurements aren't using a system that you're familiar with?

Have you ever run into this problem? You find a great cake recipe, but you don't have the size of cake pan that it calls for. Or you want to try that cake batter in an odd shaped cake pan. Well here is one way to solve this quandary. Check out the cake pan conversion chart over at allrecipes.com.

The chart is pretty extensive. The only problem is that it only lists conventional sizes of cake pans. This is offset by the fact that it also gives volume amounts for each size. So if you are using an odd shaped cake pan, you should be able to determine how much batter you'll need for it.

[Via FoodMayhem.com]

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